Simone Dinnerstein Releases 'Complicité - Music Of J.S. Bach'

On May 30 2025, pianist Simone Dinnerstein releases her new album, Complicité, on the Supertrain Records label. This is her first recording with the string ensemble she founded and directs, Baroklyn (the ensemble's name is a portmanteau of Baroque and Brooklyn, Dinnerstein's home borough), and features the music of J.S. Bach and Philip Lasser.

The second single, Dinnerstein and Baroklyn's arrangement of Bach's chorale Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161, is out today. Listen here.

Complicité also includes Bach's Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053 and his chorale Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617 (arranged by Dinnerstein and Baroklyn; released on March 14 as the first album single); Bach's Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust with continuo realization by Philip Lasser; and In the Air, Lasser's recomposition of Bach's Air on the G String. Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano and Peggy Pearson, oboe d'amore, join Dinnerstein and Baroklyn on this deeply felt recording, which embodies Dinnerstein's artistic vision that music should always be creative and new.

Of the album title, Dinnerstein says, “Complicité is a term that I first heard from my son, who studied the teachings of the French theatre practitioner, Jacques Lecoq. Three important ideas that Lecoq communicated to his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness), and disponsibilité (openness). I was so intrigued by these ideas, and the different exercises that my son learned in order to cultivate these skills within ensemble acting, that I decided to try a Lecoq approach with my own musical ensemble, Baroklyn.”

Dinnerstein's recounting of the recording process for the second aria of Bach's Cantata 170 reflects this. She writes in the album's liner notes, “In order to communicate most fully, we arranged the ensemble so that as much as possible, everyone could see each other. The strings and oboe d'amore formed a semi-circle around the piano, facing me. Jennifer was nestled into the piano, just to my right. That was particularly important in the opening and closing parts of this aria, which consist of a long phrase performed only by the unison strings and myself. The strings stop for breath every couple of notes, almost like someone crying and catching themselves. I asked the strings if they could move around the semi-circle one at a time, each playing a few notes and passing it to the next person during the breath. It is remarkable to hear this musical line divided between eight players, each with their own particular sound and inflection. If you listen closely, you can hear the music move from the left speaker to the right.”

Philip Lasser's recomposition of Air on the G String also illustrates Dinnerstein's signature approach to the music of Bach. She writes, “I asked Philip Lasser if he might write a continuo realization for me of the Air on the G String, but as an independent piece of music, like a jazz improvisation, that would happen simultaneously with the performance of the original air by the strings. What Philip wrote is truly a striking composition on its own, and it acts as a lens through which we see Bach's music in a new light. This composition feels like a new medium – one piece of music inside another.”

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY Award.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein's painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives's Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour's An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard's Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera.

The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein's unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.

Philip Lasser is a composer with both French and American cultural roots. His music creates a unique sound world that blends the colorful harmonies of French Impressionist sonorities with the dynamic rhythms and characteristics of American music. Recent commissions include works written for Anton Mejias, Simone Dinnerstein, Emmanuel Music, The American Brass Quintet, Natalie Dessay and Ensemble Connect, Juilliard415 and Cantori New York. His works have been performed worldwide by artists such as Susanna Phillips, Midori, Simone Dinnerstein, Jan Vogler, Chad Hoopes, Zuill Bailey, Natalie Dessay, Elizabeth Futral, Sasha Cooke, Lucy Shelton, Brian Zeger, Frank Almond, Margo Garrett, and Cho-Liang Lin and many others as well as by the Atlanta, Seattle, Boulder, Shreveport and Colorado Symphonies, and the MDR Leipzig and Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestras.

Track List:

Complicité

Release Date: May 30, 2025 | Supertrain Records

Music by J.S. Bach & Philip Lasser

 

Simone Dinnerstein, director and piano

Jennifer Johnson Cano, mezzo-soprano

Peggy Pearson, oboe d'amore

 

Baroklyn

Violin: Rebecca Fischer, concertmaster; Gabby Diaz, Miki-Sophia Cloud, Monica Davis, Heidi Braun-Hill, Colleen Jennings, Gabriel Boyers

Viola: Jessica Thompson, Celia Hatton

Cello: Alexis Gerlach, Julian Müller

Bass: Lizzie Burns

 

1. J.S. Bach: Herr Gott, nun schleuß den Himmel auf, BWV 617 (arr. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn)

2-4. J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053

5. J.S. Bach: Der Leib war in der Erden, BWV 161 (arr. Dinnerstein and Baroklyn)

6-10. J.S. Bach: Cantata 170, Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust (with continuo realization by Philip Lasser)

11. J.S. Bach/P. Lasser:  In the Air

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